Cops Stage Fight at Protest to Protect Identities of Undercover Officers
November 9th, 2008Wave your signs. There are so many pigs around that you might get them to pepperspray each other.
Via: ABC Denver:
Undercover police officers posing as protesters staged a fight with a police commander during the Democratic convention, and it was so convincing they were pepper-sprayed by a deputy who wasn’t in on the ruse, a civil liberties group says.
The officers pretended to struggle with the Denver police commander so it would look like they were being forcibly removed from a big demonstration and their cover wouldn’t be blown, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado said.
The ACLU said it obtained a police report on the incident under a state criminal justice records law.
In a letter to city officials, the ACLU questioned whether the fake confrontation worsened a tense situation with demonstrators and violated police rules.
Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said he was unaware of the report and couldn’t comment.
ACLU staff attorney Taylor Pendergrass asked the city of Denver’s independent police monitor to order an investigation. The monitor, Rich Rosenthal, said he received the request and was looking into it.
The incident occurred on Aug. 25, the opening night of the convention. Police arrested 106 people that night, the most of any day during the convention.
Police have said anarchists planned to cause trouble near convention delegates’ hotels and downtown businesses and that officers were trying to control the crowd.
A police “Use of Force” report released by the ACLU said, “In order not to be recognized as undercover detectives, some of the detectives put up a struggle with Commander Kroncke.” Kroncke’s first name wasn’t immediately available.
Sheriff’s deputies from neighboring Jefferson County were helping Denver police at the scene, and one deputy “thought that Commander Kroncke was being attacked” and sprayed the undercover officers, the report said.
The report said Kroncke was also sprayed. It doesn’t say how many officers were involved or how badly anyone was affected by the spray.
Research Credit: ottilie
Well, if there were that many, you’d probably get your ass beat once you started LYAO at the cops who were pepper-spraying one another. (“Our clueless incompetence isn’t funny, peon!” {WHUMPCRACK!})
Ever since the 2000 WTO meeting in Seattle was shut down by protesters (and probably before then), there have been many police provocateurs in activist circles. The most recent one I heard about was “Anna,” who after a long stint in encouraging confrontations with police at large protests, finally succeeded in getting a group of kids to talk about blowing something up. Apparently this was enough to sentence one of the “terrorists” to 20 years in prison:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=80311
http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2007091261.php
I believe that there was a photo posted on the internet of the scuffle, showing that the ‘protester’ had the exact same unusual brand of boots as the police as he was being dragged away! No surprises here.
I believe the last incident referred to with the identical boots was a Canadian labor response to a trade meeting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKyeemaGnv4
What is interesting is those two who were stopped had been egging the crowd to throw rocks. Here, Keith McHenry says he observed the fake protesters carrying backpacks of rocks and tossing them. http://www.kwgn.com/pages/news_local_landing/?ACLU-Police-staged-confrontation-amid-co=1&blockID=128860 Another detail is that a few minutes before, this large Denver crowd had all been eating in a park that they had a permit for. Then there were reports of police suddenly all moving in and tromping around, stepping on plates and using pepper spray, and literally herding them out of the park before they got encircled downtown. http://www.ucimc.org/node/3261